The Search For "red" Brings Whatever. And Bots...again.

Did you try changing the 'sort options?' You can search by specific colours.

No, I didn't try that. I thought that just keywords should be enough. If I was a buyer, it's how I would search.

"red abstract painting" Jeffrey how much more 'sort options' can she search for "specific colours"? The sad thing - it's not unique to searching for "red abstract painting" - unless searching by name - if you aren't in the top 1000 or so works - you'll never get found on FAA search - who's going to look through that many anyhow? The top searches are hogged by mostly the same artists/photographers who are selling - and because they are on top - they will continue to remain there because their work will be found in search and so bought - perhaps. FAA search only works for successful consistent sellers - it does not work for new folks - they must bring customers in from the outside - through social media or however - it doesn't matter their key words, title, description - nothing works for FAA search unless it's really unique or they search for the artist/photographer by name.

The color selections in the search is VERY specific. If you search for a given shade of red, there's no margin for error. It has to be an exact match for that RGB code. Might be valuable for a designer looking for a very specific hue to match the paint or something but for the average person looking for a pop of red, not so much. You quickly throw out a lot of good options. It's even more obvious if you use two colors in the selection tool. I wish the color "sort" had some "fuzzy" factor setting to it so a customer could get a wider variety of a given color. I find it too exact to be useful unless you are indeed trying for an exact match.

Anyway, keywords which I agree is how the average customer is going to search for a color... I skimmed the first few pages and I saw images that I would question being called "red" anything but the word red was in each case in the keywords. Did you click "show all" to see the rest of the keywords? On a few of them, I have a feeling the artist was copying keywords that they used on similar artwork and missed removing the colors that didn't apply. If you feel strongly enough about it, you can send a message to support about people you feel are mis-tagging their work.

Julia,

Search red abstract paintings in quotes - "red abstract paintings."

As Mark mentioned the colour sort (or any sort) is the key. Once buyers begin using the sort options, any predetermined rankings go out the window. The owner does not make sort buttons because he is bored; he wants shoppers to be able to narrow down what they are looking for - quickly, and more precisely, if possible. He is here to sell prints. I understand it is 'how you would search,' but you're not searching for everyone in the world. You might be using a common sense approach, but let's face it, when is it ever 'common sense' with everyone?

Try it... search 'tree' for example. Look at who is in the number one position. Now start playing with the sort options and watch 'numero uno' disappear. So much for rankings, huh?

To add, addressing one of your questions (I had to find my notes), from the owner of the website:

"The search engine is using something call stemming.

When someone searches for "running", for example, the stemming process allows the search engine to find images that have the keyword "running" or "run".

It's also what allows the search engine to find plurals, as well. A search for "dog" will show images that match "dog" or "dogs". A search for "dogs" will find images that match "dog" or "dogs", as well.

You could argue that someone searching for "dogs" wants to see multiple dogs per image... and doesn't want to see images of single dogs... but that's very hard to determine without asking the buyer to tell you exactly what he/she wants.

The "training" example that's mentioned, above, is an anomaly that has to do with the multiple definitions of the word "train".

When you search for "train", do you want to see locomotives... or do you wan to see someone standing at a blackboard? There is no way to know.

Stemming causes "training" to get reduced down to "train", and then you end up seeing images that match either "training" or "train". Since there are tons of images of locomotives... and very few images of people standing at a blackboard... you end up seeing tons of locomotives.

Again - that's an anomaly that results from "training" being stemmed down to "train"... and then "train" having multiple definitions.

We'll correct issues like that on a case-by-case basis.

In general, the changes to the search engine have been very positive. We are constantly testing changes to the search engine, and the stemming changes definitely improved sales.

Sean

Julia, I looked at your 'Red Illusions' painting. You have the tags: red, abstract painting, but I did not see a single tag as: red abstract painting, which you are allowed to do. With the new stemming results, the search engine is producing different results, as mentioned. Honestly speaking, don't rely on the search and drag you own buyers in here.

Red (comma) abstract painting. (Which no one would search for, but they might search Montreal (comma) Canada out of force of habit.)



"Red Abstract painting" (in quotes). The system has automatically selected painting as the default medium, as it did above, and also removed 8200 selections. Simply by adding 'painting' to the search engine it automatically sorted on your behalf.



Red abstract (no commas, no quotes, no medium)



Red abstract painting (no commas, no quotes, but look at the medium. The system recognised 'painting," again, and automatically selected a medium.



I immediately searched for 'blue cow' and the system stays defaulted to the painting sort option. So unless a buyer changes it, guess what? It will automatically search for paintings.



When you really think and play around with the search engine, it does make things fair, when buyers are sorting or, in the above case, including painting in the search.

Confusing, a complete mess, or fair for all? People will see it differently, no doubt.

Good luck!

So, you'd need the keywords "Red", "Abstract", "paintings" AND "red abstract paintings" as keywords?

abstract and painting are filters so those are kind of ignored. and red - is a color and due to stemming, anything with red in its name or could have red in its name are listed as well. colored for example - would have red in it. it's the over done plural part that we wanted.

you don't know which are human or bots. not all of them are from bots. plenty of people live where the bots live.


---Mike Savad

People are spending waaaaay too much time worrying about the search. Especially considering there it nothing you can do about it, and no matter how well you understand it, unless you are one of the big sellers, you are not going to come high enough in the search to make that much difference. Certainly not enough to off set the value of spending that worry time on adverting outside of FAA.

If you get outside of FAA and advertise, your ranking in the search or your understanding of it is a moot point.

Advertise direct links back to your AW and you take the search and all of its quirks out of the equation. Simple as that.

I am not saying ignore the search. You have to put good tags or keywords good descriptions. But after that, there really isn't anything that you can do that will get you better results then advertising outside of FAA no matter how much you understand the search.

Oh my.

I find very little red color in Splash of Color. I find none at all in Zin-FinDel.

Now let me get this straight. In a three word search, the very first word being red, the search will turn up images on the first page that have little, or no red color in them?

I suppose that potential buyers have little else to do than to “play around”?

“I read here that I have to have sales to show up in search. But how am I going to have sales if I don't show up in search? If things are designed that way, there will be always the same artists on top of the list, no?”

For myself, I have been fortunate in that I have had some sales here, though not a lot. But then I have been her for less than a year.

Understandably faa won't expound much on the algorithms they use. And while I certainly appreciate the job Jeff Campbell does as I understand it (please correct me if I am wrong) Jeff is a volunteer.

In the past I have suggested that faa consider hiring more paid, professional staff members. And no, I don't mean moderators, I mean staff members that can address issues like this, and issues currently being discussed in an thread regarding tags/keyword spamming.

As far as:

“I understand it is 'how you would search,' but you're not searching for everyone in the world. You might be using a common sense approach, but let's face it, when is it ever 'common sense' with everyone?”

“Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by ("common to") nearly all people, and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.[1]” --- Wiki

Well, it is apparent that there are those that would attempt to redefine the meaning of the term “common sense”

Yes, I have seen the use of the term “common sense” misused many times.

Kudos to Jeff for including the suggestion that you, Julia, use the keywords, “red abstract painting” without commas in the keywords for your painting.

In a word, Melany, yes!

Now. May we now have a sticky thread explaining this rather convoluted explanation regarding how the search here on faa works?

The FAA search does not look at descriptions. So that answers that. In the search mentioned in the opening post all the entries should have the the word red or a word that begins with red such as the name Redon. I did not see any that did not have the word red as a keyword. Even the one that had redon has red also. So I question whether you are using the drop down menu to see all the words. As mentioned all three of the words you used are filters and sometimes the search will pick up on that but if you want to find just paintings the best way is to use the search options to filter. That will narrow the results to only art that had "painting" as the listed medium. No search is going to give you the exact results you think it should and that is generally inadvertent anomalies rather then intentional spamming or a defective search. Overall it works pretty good. Keep in mind the search is based solely on the upload information in the tag section as well as the filters such as artist name and medium. It cannot see the work or interpret your search entry. It just finds matchestowords you enter.

Now ranking is another story and the search is for the most part linear so everyone wants to be number one. So it is up to you to bring some buyers in if you want to move up the rankings. Of course when you upload a new art you will be toward the top in a search sorted by age. You will also show up in the random search sort. There is not just one search

Another way to be on top is to sponsor keywords and phrases. So if you had sponsored "red abstract abstract painting" your work that has that exact phrase would show up in the third row at least some of the time if not all, depending on how many others have sponsored it. So you have a chance

Keep in mind the more searches you can be in the better chance you have of being on top in that search. So how you keyword is important.

Abstract artists may run short of words so the best way to get sales is to market yourself and your work. That will move you up faster in the search than anything else.

Everyday more work is added so to be competitive you have to be active somehow. New artists do join and sell well. I know I did.

Quote
"So, you'd need the keywords "Red", "Abstract", "paintings" AND "red abstract paintings" as keywords?"

It is a good idea but not necessary. As mentioned all three of these are also filters and sometimes the search does apply filters when you put those word in the keyword so this is a special case that is not as predictable.

However if you want to sponsor the search "red abstract painting" you would need that exact tag in to show up on line 3. So there I have given one more of my selling secrets.

Melanie,

When we tag our art, it's best that we think outside the box on how someone else may search. When we think only on how we would search, we're limiting things to just that. By using 'red abstract painting' (one single tag), over 80 (?) percent of the competition was removed from the search results when quotes were used as I searched. Why? I did not look, but maybe they do not have that as a single tag?

Floyd

I do agree people need to drag their clients in, but let's let those who who want to learn something have their time, please.

not everything can come through advertising. you'll only about 2% of the people when you do that. the search will ALWAYS be the first place people will look to find things.


---Mike Savad

Thank you all for your input and help!

Jeff, thank you for making time to give me different examples of ways to search.

Mike, "plenty of people live where the bots live." It's so funny. I hope so and thank you :)

Bradford, "However if you want to sponsor the search "red abstract painting" you would need that exact tag in to show up on line 3. So there I have given one more of my selling secrets."
Can you elaborate, please? I don't quite understand what it means. And thank you for sharing.

Gone to work on my tags.
Happy to be here!

You're welcome, Julia. Good luck!

Quote

"Bradford, "However if you want to sponsor the search "red abstract painting" you would need that exact tag in to show up on line 3. So there I have given one more of my selling secrets."
Can you elaborate, please? I don't quite understand what it means. And thank you for sharing. "

Sponsoring a search is one way to get on the front page of a given search. That's what levels the playing field so any member can be in any search at least some of the time. If you look at any search page there is a link to do that. There are also threads on that you can find by using the discussion search. I was merely pointing out that if you want to be on the first page you can sponsor that phrase exactly without the quotes and you will be in that search on the third line at least some of the time. Maybe all of the time if no one else sponsored it.. Merely having those three words as tags (red, abstract, painting) will get you in the search somewhere but to be on the third line you not only have to sponsor that phrase But also have the complete phrase as a tag.

Quote
"Now let me get this straight. In a three word search, the very first word being red, the search will turn up images on the first page that have little, or no red color in them? "

They have a filter for that. Its called "colors." Its on the left on the search page. Try it and watch the search results change. Its not playing around it is a standard search method. If they don't know how to use it they sure know how to skip over the ones that are not red enough.

The word search doesn't see the image. It goes by words. . There is no inspection for keywords. So there will be some of that. Even the microstocks that have inspections don't lock the keywords for edit. I don't see that as a huge problem or they would have locked the keyword edits a long time ago on other sites. If you see something that is truly intentional spam then report it. But the word search is looking for the word red not to see how much red color is there.


Quote from Floyd
"@Bradford It was my understanding that Google looks at the descriptions. If that is not the case then I stand corrected. And it would be nice to know."

I merely was answering the initial question as to how the FAA search works. It does not look at the description field. As for Google I just go under the assumption that they are looking hard at descriptions and never said otherwise.

My prediction for this site is that with the new links added on every image page. visitors will get deeper into out portfolios no matter how they arrive there. There is every reason to be optimistic right now.

Thank you Bradford, now I understand. It's about sponsoring the page.

{red abstract painting julia bars site:fineartamerica.com}
Very few art buyers come to FAA to begin their searching.
The trick is to promote your art everywhere and point buyers back here.
{ansel adams rose site:fineartamerica.com}
It is a matter of consistency and perseverance.
Enjoy your art whether it sells or pleases absolutely nobody but YOU!

“Very few art buyers come to FAA to begin their searching.”

Oh really? Is not FAA marketed to the public as a place to find the best art available?

Or do they perhaps rely on the artists to provide the consumers?

Sorry, I am a bit confused.

I hope someone will clear this up for me.

Walter, Somewhere there is an piece Sean wrote about that. He made it very clear that most people begin the art buying process with a Google search. The average occasional art buyer is not going to be able to name a single POD or even know what one is. The point was that FAA has a very good presence on Google. It is no secret that the bulk of traffic come in through a Google search. Google drives traffic to here. He also shows stats that FAA has more traffic than any other site of its type.

When I joined here I never expected FAA to "provide the consumers". I expected them to provide a place for me to place my work,and then handle transactions, and provide for order fulfilment and shipping. It has far exceeded any expectation I had of bringing in traffic.

Curtis, “Very few art buyers come to FAA to begin their searching.” I see your point. But potential buyers will not search by the artist name either. They don't know many of us exist.

"As for Google I just go under the assumption that they are looking hard at descriptions and never said otherwise."

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you did say otherwise. I have a tendency to think in terms of FAA/Google search as all in one. My bad.

As for adverting, I get well over 50% of my sales on other sties from advertising. I get the data that verifies that. I have no reason to believe that that is not the case on FAA but we do no get the data we need to verify that. It would be nice to have that information so we can do more of what is working and less of what is not.

@Walter From what I have seen of the ads that FAA is currently or just recently running on TV, they are advertising for artist to sell, not so much for buyers to buy.

I agree with what Bradford said. I understood from day one that it was going to be my job to bring my own buyers. It took me about 6 months that figure out the FAA search was NOT going to work for me no matter how hard I tried to make it work. Google search is another story but again we do not get the data to verify what does and does not work. That is why I only advertise individual, direct links back to individual items on my AW and not to FAA where the buyers can get lost in search that only works for the big sellers for the most part.

Roy- I've noticed here one artist can have 5 or 6 pieces of art (if not more) per search result page. Really unfair. They should take a page from Etsy's book and limit the amount of items an artist can have per search result page. On Etsy it appears that one person can't have more than one item on the first search results page then 2 or 3 on pages after that. The Etsy way is much better at spreading the wealth and allowing new artists to be found.

I'm sure that established artists who own the search results would disagree :)

The bottom line is, if I go to Google and enter

red abstract painting

... with no quotes, I get page after page of red abstract paintings. And that's exactly what buyers would expect to happen here; Google totally sets expectations for how search will work. Not one buyer out of 100 would think of using quotes in a search for "red abstract painting". They aren't going to hunt around the page for a Help link and look for guidelines in how FAA's search is supposed to work. They aren't going to read this forum thread. They're just going to do the same thing they'd do with Google, and look at the results, and decide that well, FAA doesn't have a lot of red abstract paintings.

@Julia, that is why I see it as so important to get the buyers into you AW and not the FAA mother ship. They search in your AW the see your images only. They search in FAA they see 7.5 million images and after a few clicks they are lost to you for ever.

To be fair, at a glance I do see that people are putting in 'red' into their keywords even if their painting has little to no red in it. Whether FAA could tie the search term to the color palate they generate I have no idea.

out of curiousity, and as a result of this thread, i searched erotic art. someone joined FAA in august this year under the name Erotic Art. a few of this person's works show up in this search and NOTHING ELSE. so how do we circumvent that? do we all change our names to reflect the work we sell?

until our new person joined, i did show up in this search.

What is fair for the individual artist is not fair to the owners of FAA. FAA is in the business of selling images, any image. They are not in the business of promoting art or artists. Why would it be fair to ask for proven sellers be set aside for those that have never sold or are slower sellers?

They are not only putting red in where there is little or no red, but I see several photographs that are 100% photo realism come up when I searched on red abstract paintings.

the search looks for the persons name first, and i have seen that before, where they name themselves a popular keyword. if they have nothing in their gallery and or they don't have that kind of art, report it to tech, and i guess they will do something about it.

naming yourself a common word works for and against you. i think it works against more than for.


---Mike Savad

@Carolyn - send a message to tech support. When I joined if you didn't include your name in the keywords, no one could find you using the search box at the top - they had to do a separate artist search..

Sometime in the past year, they made a change so if the search term matched the name of a member, it shows their work. It's not usually a problem, but every so often you hit on one like you have where the search obscures actual work because the member name is in essence a keyword. Anyway, they will resolve those issues if they are pointed out. At least they have when I stumbled upon instances like you described.

FAA's search results are wildly different than Google's for several reasons. First, they rely on keywords entered by the artist, which is a total hit-or-miss proposition. Second, the results are heavily skewed by previous sales. Google isn't trying to sell us the images it pulls up in its search results. FAA wants to sell something, even if it ends up being something totally different from a 'red abstract painting'.

But the buyer doesn't understand any of this. They just see a few paintings containing red, and one of an elephant, and a portrait of Mother Theresa, and if they're really looking for a red abstract painting, they may lose interest pretty quick.

I realize FAA isn't going to match Google's accuracy. That will never happen. I think that those of us who aren't big sellers, and have no presence in the search results, should probably forget FAA's search and focus our efforts on Google and try to figure out how we could be found there.

thanks Mike and Mark, i will. and i did. :)

and this is interesting. now it only does it if you search for an artist as Erotic Art so maybe now that i've bothered tech support it was really just a blip. :)

Toby said:
"Roy- I've noticed here one artist can have 5 or 6 pieces of art (if not more) per search result page. Really unfair. They should take a page from Etsy's book and limit the amount of items an artist can have per search result page. On Etsy it appears that one person can't have more than one item on the first search results page then 2 or 3 on pages after that. The Etsy way is much better at spreading the wealth and allowing new artists to be found.

I'm sure that established artists who own the search results would disagree :)"

Good idea.
Toby, now that some of the other problems with this site have been addressed it is even less effective for FAA to keep showing the same artists.The new links from our images into our portfolio should do enough to engage the reader so that top sellers entire portfolios do not need have to be paraded out in mindless linear fashion. Simply show examples from various artists and if those artists are selected then show more from their image pages.

What might have served FAA well when there were few artists is working against everyone now except the few that are at the top. Any site with large amounts of stuff needs to present ways to go deeper not just move through a search in linear fashion. If you didn't click on the first image by an artist in a search , the chances that you are going to select the next one are a lot less. If you did select an artist's image you should be shown other art by that artist on the image page AND a prominent link to the artist's portfolio. That was not being done before. I can only hope Sean realizes that the goal is to engage the buyer, not push the best sellers to the exclusion of all others. In some searches I am actually the best seller but not being one of that favorites I am still buried under. Now with the new redesigned sales pages the next step is to start offering more choices in artists.

There is a huge amount of great art and artists that can't be seen the way it is now.

@Floyd, I am torn between my FAA and AW. Logically yes, the potential buyer will not be lost in FAA if I take him to my AW. But! FAA is well known and the buyer can see the site, can find some info, FAQ, policies, etc. While my AW is just another artist's site, no much different than another one of mine, where I am sitting alone in my web... :)
What I mean is that there is no credibility comparing to FAA.

I think the variety of the art presented in search will only benefit FAA. Top list artists might be wonderful and successful, but if it's not what the visitor is looking for, he will not browse through 70 pages, trying to find what he likes. He will leave and go else where. So all artists should be given an equal chance to be found. It will be fair to CUSTOMERS.

Change the "sort" mode from "All" to "Random", and you'll get exactly what you're looking for - a random sample of images from all of the artists on the site.

Sean

Sean, I get that but I really doubt that 1 buyer in 1,000 ever does it, or has any clue as to what "All" and "Random" mean in connection with a search.

Maybe if it were labelled "Best Selling Artists" and "All Artists"...

"Maybe if it were labelled "Best Selling Artists" and "All Artists"'

If I see "Best Selling" I am going for Best Selling every time... may as well not have an All Artists, imho.

"Maybe if it were labelled "Best Selling Artists"

Do you mean like this, Jim?

I seriously doubt that many people interpret "Random" as meaning "All Artists".

I seriously doubt that many do much interpreting at all. I think they are the ones doing "random".

But I bet every dime Jeffery has in his pocket right this minute, that Sean, if he wanted to and maybe already does, can tell you exactly what the behavior is of the people using the search.

Now all we have to do is prey it lose from him! lol

@Floyd "Now all we have to do is prey it lose from him! lol"

LOL

I would look "Random" or "Featured" or other just if I was browsing out of curiosity.
If I search for something in particular, I would only use keywords in different variations. That way I feel that I have more control. It's like entering a shopping mall and go directly to pink shoes, passing by gazillion things you don't care about.

It took me a long time to see the sort button. I didnt know what it meant. So maybe if it was called something else. I just don't know what. Maybe " search sort". Its a great feature but it needs to be more obvious. I sure would like to know how many come in and find it. Maybe it needs to be placed away from the other filters.

"But I bet every dime Jeffery has in his pocket right this minute, that Sean, if he wanted to and maybe already does, can tell you exactly what the behavior is of the people using the search."

He does not make buttons because he is bored.

Just sayin'